HELP: Innovative European campaign sells tobacco-free lifestyle

The European Union HELP: for a life without tobacco campaign has built a transnational brand to bolster a positive image of nonsmoking throughout Europe.  It is one of the largest public health awareness campaigns ever organized. In October 2008, the European Commission brought youth together with experts in tobacco control, media, and public health to learn from the campaign and explore ways to build on it. 

New media promotes smoke-free lifestyles

“Had enough of looking so healthy? Try Nico Clean, the new face cream enriched with tobacco extracts,”   urges a film clip on the Nicomarket.com website. “It gives you a deadly gray complexion in minutes.”  Site visitors, who may have been drawn in by viral marketing clips, can then click to add Nico Clean or a variety of other imaginary nicotine-based products, to a virtual shopping basket….or download a copy of the clip to their mobile phone.
 
Playing on the absurdity of promoting tobacco as it underlines consequences of tobacco use, this  internet spoof  is part of the European Union's HELP: for a life without tobacco campaign. One of the largest public health awareness campaigns ever organized, the initiative covers all 27 EU member countries. Nicomarket.com is the most recent addition to the HELP campaign's comprehensive communication concept that combines television spots (including MTV), e-coaching, YouTube and a website, using state-of-the-art marketing techniques to build a transnational brand that bolsters a positive image of nonsmoking. 

Speaking to both youth and adults

Youth is a key audience for denormalising tobacco use, but campaigns that target youth have often proved to be ineffective, especially those that are patronising or “preachy”. The HELP campaign speaks both to youth and adults, smokers and non-smokers, offering help to quit, not to start, or avoid passive smoking. It avoids judging smokers, instead giving information that allows its audience to draw its own conclusions. Engaging Europeans through over 4.5 billion media contacts (TV and internet combined) the campaign has enhanced virtual exchange with face-to-face interaction in field events including carbon monoxide testing. “Telling someone that the air just exhaled wouldn't pass the city's pollution standards is a pretty effective way to communicate the immediate health effects of active or passive smoking: it gives people a sense of just how bad the long-term risks are”, said Dr Nick Schneider, who represented the German Cancer Research Centre on the HELP campaign advisory board.

Empowering youth as partners in action

Evidence showing the impact on smoking behaviour of campaigns targeting youth has been unconvincing, but approaches that include youth as partners in action have had more promising results. In cooperation with the HELP campaign, the European Youth Forum organized an initiative to involve youth in the formation of European policy on tobacco. Following national consultations involving youth organizations and tobacco control advocates in the development of national manifestos, the process led to the drafting of the Young People for a Life Without Tobacco: a European Manifesto (see link below).  This initiative was the inspiration for Latin American youth activists who gathered at the regional tobacco control conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 and drafted the Declaration of Latin American and Caribbean Youths in Favour of Tobacco-Free Lives. “I had worked to help draft the European Youth Manifesto” said Nick Schneider, “so I was amazed when I went to Rio and met the youth there: they had picked up the idea from us off the internet! It just goes to show the power of internet for sharing ideas and stimulating action…and how fast it can go”.

Sharing strategies for communicating health

The concepts, approaches and evaluation results of the HELP campaign were presented in the Communicating Health, the Tobacco Example workshop held by the Public Health, 9-11 October 2008, in Brussels. The workshop brought experts in tobacco control, media, marketing and public health together with youth representatives who had developed the European Youth Manifesto. At the event, more than 170 participants from 29 countries explored the challenges of promoting healthy behaviour and opportunities for using new media to influence health behaviour. At the end of the meeting they issued recommendations on communication initiatives promoting health, including:

• Health communication campaigns should be sustained, research driven, linked to broader advocacy initiatives, and designed to strengthen local campaigns
• It is vital to partner with youth in every stage of efforts to elicit behaviour change
• The impact of commercial marketing, the potential for innovative electronic communications and the role of communication are key considerations in planning interventions aimed at behaviour change
• Branding is a tool stimulating behaviour change, both for healthy behaviour and against it (in marketing of unhealthy products)
• New media effectively engages young people but has some potential drawbacks including the digital divide and potential isolation from other forms of communication; it requires a good understanding of the audience.

European Heart Network active in tobacco control advocacy

The European Heart Network (EHN), long active in European tobacco control advocacy, was on the Advisory Board of the HELP campaign. “The HELP campaign has been successful engaging youth but it is not only about youth: it has helped increase Europeans’ awareness about both the need for smoke-free policy and access to cessation assistance,” said Susanne Logstrup, Director of the EHN. The EHN has recently joined forces with the European Respiratory Society, Cancer Research UK and France’s National Cancer Institute to form the European Smoke Free Partnership, which is developing a toolkit for its members’ member organizations (heart foundations, cancer leagues and respiratory societies) to help them approach their ministries of health and finances for advocacy on tobacco taxation. “Right now we are working hard with the rest of the European tobacco control community to ensure that the tobacco industry is excluded from participation in European Commission impact assessment consultations on health matters.  This is in line with the guidelines on article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control which adopts the principle that there is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health interests”. 

Further information:

•    Nicomarket.com
•    European Youth Manifesto
•    HELP website
•    Communicating Health meeting, presentations and conclusions
•    European Heart Network and tobacco advocacy